Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Franz Josef, Hiding

The unforeseen consequences of
not sleeping in the heat near fire
escapes so rusty and worn, no one
knows what kind of weight they
will bear, occasional music there a
police siren song on rain battered
streets.  Inside, late Haydn, symphonies
for insomniacs, dipsos, best savored
with whiskey and water, shots and backs,
all that chases blue sounds of death down
lead foot alleys, wino racket amid the
garbage and the towers of uncollected
waste, no tomorrow music only a dead
man would write, sound stricken from
the heart on no sun rising mornings
like this one, white snow static on the TV
where the images should be.



Sex and the Single Girl

Making plans, she speaks reverently
of a Marian retreat, quiet times of
reflection and prayer with women,
young and old, such as herself,
who truly believe.  Then she speaks
of mercy fucking, having sex with
the high school loser, a guy so
pathetic and reviled, he’d probably
never even had sex with himself.
“It wasn’t great but it was the right
thing to do.  I made his day, that’s
for sure. I’ve never seen anyone so
grateful.  For the right guy, I might
even do it again.”
Recounts all of the boys she’s slept
with, before the high school dweeb,
and after. The men she’d like to
have and the ones to avoid.
Plans to stay single, wide open,
and available, even at the retreat.
“You’d be surprised at some
of the stuff you hear there.
Some of the stuff you see.”



                                                The Dancing Girls of Death

She was fifteen going on,
a Sex in the City age, three gold
rings in her right ear, a clown’s-
head charm bracelet around each
wrist, and a blue butterfly tattoo
on her butt, no one in her family
had seen nor, ever would, if she
had her way. “My stepdad would
freak if he knew. Especially, as he
paid for it.” She told one of her
boy toys who was so stoned all he
could manage was an obligatory,
“Bummer,” his reaction to all negatives
like his all purpose “Cool,” for all
the positive things in life. Like
beer blasts and pill parties, unprotected
sex in beachfront houses while parents
were away at orgies of their own,
though they called them something else.

All the like-minded she witches in
her coven had matching tats on
their ass as a kind of blood kinship
thing that would forever unite them
in sisterhood until the next falling out,
next sex text one of them would send,
of one of their number, to like, everyone
on earth. Something sent as a kind of
joke, under the influence of alcohol
and E, barely remembered after, until
the message went, like viral, and the girl
in question thought razor blades
in the bath was the only solution
to an otherwise insoluble problem.
And it might have been, were it not
for the kid brother seeing the text,
and barging into that room no adult
would dare to go.
Accused of bullying, violating
sacred trusts, and child porn laws,
she stonewalls authorities, insists she is
above all this childish stuff and maybe
she was, in a way, if someone hadn’t
almost died.

1 comment:

  1. To some, Catlin writes true grit; to others, gold dust. Whatever, no fool's gold here.

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